Korean Search Market
Posted: January 2nd, 2008, by Yunho Chung
Prestigious Financial Times included an article today about the Korean search market. Korea is, as you may already know, not “googlearized” as most other search markets in the world. Instead is Naver the leading portal. Actually, the article states that Naver now is the fifth biggest portal in the world. In Korea, 77 % of the internet searches are made there. Second is Daum with around 11 % and then Yahoo with around 4 %. Google? They have a share of below 2 % of the searches…
According to TechCrunch, Google is currently aiming at the Japanese market and the big search engine in China, Baidu, just lost its CFO under mysterious circumstances. Naver remains strong in Korea and are currently testing around 100 new innovations according to the FT article. One of the key benefits of Naver is the service Jisikin (means something like knowledge person) where people interact by asking and answering questions.
What this really shows is how very developed the TMT (Telecom, Media & Technology) sector in Korea is. “Higher penetration of personal computers, innovative technology and amazing mobile speed well explain why we should increase investment here” Susan Decker (president of Yahoo) said earlier last year in Seoul according to the same article. I couldn’t agree more and would not be surprised if Google is a bit worried that Naver have international ambitions (next up is Japan).
